From her hiding-place in the adjoining room Vera creeps out with a white face, and takes her way up-stairs to her mother's room. Her step is slow and heavy, her eyes are dull and black, there is no single gleam of brightness in them. The last drop has been added to the already overflowing cup of misery and despair.
With an unfaltering hand she goes to a small medicine chest kept for her mother's use, and unlocking it, takes out two small vials filled with a dark-colored liquid. Each vial has a label pasted on, containing written directions for use, but without the name of the drug.
Vera knits her straight, black brows thoughtfully together as she puzzles over them. "I remember," she says, aloud, "that mamma said one would produce a long, deep sleep, the other—death! Now which is which?"
After a minute she decides to her satisfaction, and placing one vial back, goes away with the other in her bosom. In her own little room she sits down to pen a few words to Leslie, then slowly kneels by the bedside.
"I do not think anyone can blame me," she murmurs, "not even God. The world is so cold and hard I cannot live in it any longer. I am going to my mother."
Some broken, pleading words falter over the quivering, white lips, then a low amen.
She rises, puts the treasured vial to her lips, and drains the last bitter drop, throwing the empty vessel on the hearth where it cracks into a hundred fragments. Then she lies down upon the bed with her letter to Leslie clenched tightly in her slim white hand. And when they come to awake her in the morning, she is lying mute and pale, with the marble mask of death over all her beauty.